1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the game of poker, and more specifically to a new variation of a hold 'em style poker game.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Poker is a card game that has been around for nearly two hundred years in many variations, and is well-known throughout the world. Although some variations are more distinct than others, generally speaking, players wager on their own hands—the player with the highest ranking hand who participated in the last such wager, winning the wagered money of the other players. The ranking of the hands is based on collecting cards of matching value, a run of cards of consecutive values, and/or a set of cards of the same suit. Although some variations of the game involve different rankings of hands, it will be assumed that the general ranking of the hands (straight flush, four-of-a-kind, full house, flush, straight, three-of-a-kind, two pairs, one pair, high card only) is well known to those of ordinary skill in the art of poker, and will not be elaborated upon further.
Of the numerous variations of the game, there is a particular genre of the game, known as “hold 'em” games, which have become extremely popular in recent years. Hold 'em games involve some cards being dealt to each player (“hole cards”), and a series of community cards dealt on “the board,” the latter belonging to all players. The object of hold 'em games is to make the best possible hand out of a combination of a player's hole cards and the community cards. The precise rules for the number of hole cards dealt to each player and how those cards may be combined with the community cards, differ with each hold 'em variation.
The most popular variation of hold 'em games is Texas Hold 'Em, which is currently the game with the largest purse at the World Series of Poker®. Texas Hold 'Em involves each player receiving two hole cards each. After an initial round of wagering, three community cards (known as “the flop”) are dealt on the board, followed by another round of wagering. A fourth (“the turn”) and a fifth (“the river”) card are dealt on the board with the a round of wagering after each. Following the final round of wagering, the pot of collected wagers is awarded to the player with the highest ranking hand. A player's hand is determined by the best five-card poker hand that could be made using neither, either, or both of his hole cards together with an appropriate complement of board cards. Thus, if the board has a royal straight flush from the five community cards, then each player remaining will have the same exact hand regardless of his or her hole cards.
Texas Hold 'Em has major flaws with its inherent odds that often produce unfair results. A recent explosion in the popularity of poker has dramatically increased the number of amateur players competing in major games and tournaments. Numerous popular professionals have spoken out about the undesirable results produced in Texas Hold 'Em by the sheer volume of players who, through ignorance, do not act according to logic. One such professional, Daniel Negraneu, who was the 2004 Player of the Year, wrote that the prestige of the World Series of Poker has suffered for this exact reason.
Because of its odds, Texas Hold 'Em has an undesirable level of randomness. Whereas in an ideal game, the presence of ignorant play would lead to consistently profitable results for skilled players who capitalize on their strategic edge, the reality of Texas Hold 'Em is that in many situations the odds are too close between a player with a superior hand and one with a hand that is currently weak to dissuade the player with a weaker hand from making a bad decision to call when there are still community cards to be dealt; even when mathematics would dictate that folding is the most intelligent choice. When the player does call inappropriately, the odds of that player being rewarded by success are too considerable to be fair. This is especially true when more than one player calls illogically and compounds the chance that the superior hand of a skilled player will be caught. If three players each with only a 20% chance of winning a hand call against a player who has an 80% chance against any one of them, the combined chance of one of the three with 20% odds catching the precise card or cards needed to win is about 60% against the player with the dominant hand. In this case, the dominant hand becomes an underdog.
Proof that there are flaws in Texas Hold 'Em can be seen in the results of major tournaments in the 2005 World Series of Poker®. The final tables of events that featured Texas Hold 'Em where dominated by amateur players, whereas the final tables of other variations of poker such as Seven Card Stud and Omaha Hold 'Em, which do not suffer the same degree of inherent flaws, featured a much higher percentage of professionals at the final table. Increasingly as major Texas Hold 'Em poker games (and tournaments) are made more accessible to the masses, the professionals are catching more “bad beats” or situations where the odds dictated they should win, but they were caught on the turn or river by an inferior hand. Because of this, the top professionals are winning far less consistently in Texas Hold 'Em than when the entire field was largely comprised of skilled players. This is not true with other games.
Those who promote the game of poker, either for television ratings or in order to attract players to casinos, are vested in keeping poker at the highest levels accessible to the masses. However, the professionals, especially at this year's World Series of Poker®, advocated raising entry fees to discourage the kind of players who inject too much randomness into the game by calling when they ought to fold. A better solution is remedying Texas Hold 'Em to produce a more equitable result. Doing so appeals to both professionals who want fairness and those who wish to make poker accessible to anyone who wants to play. Thus, there is a need for variations to be introduced into Texas Hold 'Em to make it a more equitable game.
In game theory for poker, a skilled player makes decisions based upon the long-term success of that decision when weighed against various mathematical factors such as the odds of players having certain opposing hands, the odds of their own hand improving or maintaining its strength, and the size of the pot. There are many occasions in Texas Hold 'Em, especially, but not limited to smaller limit games and tournaments where players who rely on pure luck will have a chance to cripple a skilled opponent because the penalty for making bad calls is not sizable enough due to the relative odds. One major example is a flush draw. Even if an unskilled player makes a severely bad decision to match a large bet of a player with a made hand (and the size of the bet made by the person with the superior hand was strategically correct according to mathematical game theory), the inferior player will be rewarded for the mistake of a poor call nearly 40% of the time in Texas Hold 'Em. Other major mistakes are rewarded with similarly close odds. In Texas Hold 'Em, it is quite simply difficult for the skilled players to price poor players out of hands that they should not be involved with to begin with. The problem is compounded as multiple poor players call at the same time, further reducing the value of the made hand.
Another flaw in Texas Hold 'Em is that it encourages less skilled players to call with a straight draw or flush draw on the turn or the river, even when proper strategy based on pot odds (the mathematical expectation of what a player should win based on the amount in the pot, the cards he or she holds, and the number of remaining cards in the deck that will improve the hand) would dictate folding. Thus it is often difficult for more skilled players to price less skilled players out of a pot when the more skilled player has a significantly better hand. The less skilled player may then hit on the turn or the river, winning a pot they should never have been playing. Roughly 40% of the time the less skilled player will reap the benefit of his or her ignorant play.
Thus, there is a need for a variation of Texas Hold 'Em in which the outcome is based more on the skill of the player and less on the luck of the river card. It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a new variation of Texas Hold 'Em that will fill this need.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a unique deck of playing cards that will enable the creation of such a variation of Texas Hold 'Em.